Tiki Torch Outing

On January 26, 2013, 13 scouts from Troop 626 went to the Tiki Torch outing. The weather was extremely cold, but we started close to the West summit of Snoqualmie and headed on an extremely short, quarter mile trail to the campsite. However, the trail was narrow with snowbanks on either side, so it was extremely easy for the sleds to tip over and cause a 10 minute backup. When we got to the campsite, we found that Mr. Norelius had already set up 4 tents, halving the time it would have taken to set up all of the gear. I think that every scout who went on the trip was extremely thankful to him for this.

After setting up the rainfly, we scouts were allowed to play in the snow. We built snow caves and snow tunnels, went sledding, and had a snowball fight with snow shovels. Around 4:30, we started trying to make a fire. We had to keep moving the fire though, because the fire would melt the snow underneath it and then go out. By nightfall, the Tiki Torches had been lit, making a really cool scene as the orange light from the fire blended with the dark green trees and the soft white snow. Everyone went to their tents around 8:00 and eventually fell asleep.

All of us scouts woke up at 7:00 in the morning to the sound of cannons. The WDSOT had apparently caused avalanches now to make sure that an avalanche would not happen later and hurt somebody. I could see why: it had snowed around 10 inches over the night. So after another 8 cannon blasts (and several jokes about the Hunger Games), we started making another fire and hot water for breakfast. By the time we all were ready to go, so much snow had fallen that we were sure that we had left something behind, covered with snow. The trip was really fun, even though it had snowed the whole time.

Reshan Fernando